SAN FRANCISCO / Most say landslide nothing to worry about / 'Everything appears to be stable,' says engineering deputy

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A "room full" of rocks and mud rumbles down a Telegraph Hill precipice that was home to one of San Francisco's most infamous landslides, and the question becomes: Is this a teaser to a bigger disaster or just video fodder for bored TV reporters on a slow news day.

Neighbors, city geological experts and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who represents the neighborhood with stunning bay views, say there's nothing to worry about on the hilltop overlooking Sansome and Green streets where the small slide occurred Wednesday evening. Passers-by said they wouldn't have noticed the damage if it hadn't been for a parking enforcement officer seeing that some debris had spilled onto the sidewalk through a retaining fence and summoned fire crews and city inspectors. City officials estimate that roughly the debris would fill a 10-foot-by-10-foot room.

"I wouldn't have noticed anything if the barricades weren't here (blocking a lane of traffic on Sansome Street)," said Jay Isralsky, who works across Sansome from the slide.

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The slide injured no one and apparently damaged nothing other than a pine tree perched on the hillside. By Thursday afternoon, Telegraph Hill's movie-famous wild parrots were in full throat, oblivious to the earth's subtle movement.

"In geologic time, there might be something to worry about," Peskin said Thursday, noting the city's geological experts had said the area posed no imminent danger. "But in my lifetime or your lifetime, there's nothing to worry about."

Jack Weeden, who has lived in a home above the slide area for 35 years, isn't worried, despite being evacuated for 30 minutes Wednesday evening while the area was being inspected. "I'm not at all nervous," Weeden said Thursday.

But Weeden and others remember that that just a few hundred feet away in 1992, a three-story apartment building on Alta Street began sliding down the hillside. Gawkers -- and the national press -- gathered in much the same spot to watch part of the Art Deco building crash onto the street below, and city crews raced in to demolish the rest of the structure.

However, this week's "slide" -- or debris flow, as geologists call it -- doesn't appear to be a reason to pack the binoculars and head for Telegraph Hill.

"Everything appears to be stable," said Bob Beck, deputy director of engineering with the city's Department of Public Works. Becks said engineers would continue to monitor the land. "At this point it appears the material that fell is material that was loose, and we don't anticipate that any more coming loose," he said.

The Department of Building Inspection will notify Telegraph Hill property owners to retain geotechnical engineers who can determine whether any properties face additional risks. "But the risk of a major slide is fairly minor," Beck said.

"You shouldn't be concerned until we have a lot of rain in a short period of time," said Richard Pike, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park. Depending on the slope of a hillside, the amount of vegetation on it and the wind direction, that could take as much as 2 inches an hour. "We should keep an eye out on the storms coming through this weekend."

For now, some say the only potential natural disaster on this hillside will be more television coverage.

Said Sara Bari, who works in the neighborhood: "I heard somebody walk by and ask, 'I wonder if there would be all these TV cameras here if this was a poor neighborhood.' "